The online poker community makes a difference in Haiti

Haiti got hit by an earthquake in early January 2010 and news about this has flooded our television screens, our newspapers, and has even reached the confines of our poker rooms. In the days and weeks after the disaster hit Haiti, there have been a number of poker players who did their bit to help. Some posted messages to their Twitter accounts; others donated money to help rebuild Haiti.

JC Alvarado is one of the PokerStars pros who used their Twitter account to ask poker players with spare money in their PokerStars accounts, to send some of their money to the people in Haiti. Howard Lederer from Full Tilt is one of the other poker pros who did something similar. Howard isn’t the only Full Tilt player to do fundraising; they have been doing a big campaign since the disaster struck.

These efforts have paid off handsomely because the sites pledge to match all donations. It has been so successful that the groups have raised six-figure amounts. More than a couple of players have contributed the maximum amount of $1000: Michael ‘SirWatts’ Watson, Eric ‘sheets’ Haber, Gavin Griffin, John Duthie, and Steven ‘Zugwat’ Silverman.

Kyle ‘DumpingKGB’ Brossia went overboard just slightly by making donations in all five categories.

The text message service that was setup allowed people to send money by simply texting ‘HAITI’ to 90999. These text messages cost $10 each and got deducted from the donor’s cellphone account bill. The initiative has been a raging success: it has netted $6 million and counting. Eric Mizrachi, Brandon Cantu, Shannon Elizabeth and Joe Sebok are only some of the many members who tweeted the donor message to their respective followers. These players made their tweets more human by noting how scary earthquakes in San Francisco can be.

David ‘DocSands’ Sands started a PocketFives thread to encourage MTT grinders to send a certain percentage of their Sunday loot to the cause. This thread is still getting a lot of attention, one month after the Haiti disaster had happened.

Other poker players keep their followers up to date with what is happening in Haiti as well as who is sending what to the people of Haiti.

This shows that the poker community cares about what is happening around them, as well as what is happening in other countries. Not only that, but they care enough to try to make a difference.